President Barack Obama took his toughest swipe yet at congressional Republicans Wednesday in the burgeoning fight over raising the nation’s debt limit again, accusing the GOP of trying to extort him by tying a potential increase to a delay in the implementation of Obamacare.

“You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a president or a — a governing party,” Obama told the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs.

I caught a bit of him on the joke show this morning, but turned when he said it was not his job to report facts about ACA, nor to correct the Pub lies about it. He blamed PBO for not messaging Obamacare. When Ed Rendell referred to it as a flawed bill, rather than a bona fide law, I was pretty much done. One thing I did notice though, was that Chuck was sputtering and seemed really awkward in his delivery. I couldn’t help but wonder what had him so shaken. After reading this is trending on the twit machine, it explains why he was so off his game. Good!

Cookemon, Ed Rendell was a mediocre to lousy governor of PA and isn’t qualified to comment on a ‘flawed bill.” He has done nothing but throw brickbats at the president since 2007. And he’s sold himself out as a turncoat for money. Put him down under the “slime” column.

Gov Ed Rendell totally interfered in the Primaries in ’08 in PA. He more than tilted the race towards Hillary. Remember when he said Obama could not bring in his own unpaid team to knock on doors that he needed to pay money to his people to go out and pass out fliers?

You know, there’s been movies made of people who have many suitors and the suitors eventually figure out that they are one of many and they all turn on the person and she or he is left all alone. Now, I’m not saying that will happen to you Chipsticks….however…

The Daily Telegraph can disclose that Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the influential Senate Commerce Committee, visited News Corp’s London headquarters earlier this year in preparation for a potential Senate investigation.

The Senator met with News Corp’s most senior lawyers, Lord Grabiner and John Turnbull, to discuss allegations that staff at News Corp’s British newspaper arm, News UK, routinely intercepted voicemails and paid officials for information. It is thought that the Senator may have dispatched representatives to meet News Corp staff on at least two further occasions.

The Senate committee is unwilling to launch a full-scale investigation into the alleged wrongdoing until after a series of criminal trials of former News Corp staff, due to get under way next month. However, Senator Rockefeller is understood to be keen to amass as much evidence as possible ahead of the trials, so that the Committee is in a position to launch a potential investigation once the criminal proceedings have finished.

“However, it turns out Alexis had actually attempted to buy an AR-15 as his first weapon of choice from the Sharpshooters Small Arms Range in Lorton, Virginia last Saturday. But Virginia state law forbids the purchase of AR-15s by out-of-state residents. Any upside the Virginia law might have provided was entirely decimated when, according to a lawyer for the gun shop who was quoted by The New York Times, Alexis had passed a federal background check, allowing him to buy a Remington 870 Express 12-gauge shotgun and 24 shells, which he used at the Navy Yard on Monday.”

I do believe that Michelle Obama is getting more beautiful by the day. She simply doesn’t age; she blossoms. It’s as if she was born to be the First Lady of the United States and having finally found her true calling, has come into her own in a gloriously magnificent way. In 2007, everything wonderful about Michelle Obama was still slightly unformed, although evident to most of us. Now–she is just simply perfect.

Remember how John Boehner used to say that POTUS needed to exert leadership? Apparently this morning behind closed doors he made a remark about “people here and people outside these doors” that criticize him for a lack of leadership. He technically said he didn’t give a damn about what they thought of his great lack of the important skill.

My husband still watches NBC Nightly news, for at least part of the half hour. I have noticed recently as I walk by, that Chuck Todd has not been on the show with Brian. hmmmmmmm……in fact, I’ve noticed since Brian came back from knee surgery, a little different tone and choice of stories. In fact, he included the video of the doctor on Monday who declared “there is an evil in our society.” I was surprised he included that, but he set it up well, and gave a good part of it.
I’m wondering, if, perhaps, he watched news coverage while he was recovering, and started to see what a cesspool it has become. I’ve written him several times expressing my disgust and telling him I expected better.

BTW, wanted you to know I agree 100% that DC echo-chamber believes in a zero-sum game (you can only win if the other guy loses), and probably has never heard of the win-win strategy that seems a matter of instinct to our President.

Off the topic at hand, but I have been trying to post this uplifting story all day keep getting interrupted by less important things like…work and a stupid fire drill with a loudly blasting horn, that SOME folks didn’t seem to think applied to them!!! Anyway, now that’s off my chest…here’s my story.

I work for a hospice company and one of duties is supervising home health aides. All of our aides must be certified and are paid at a higher rate, so the good news about minimum wage and overtime protection doesn’t really apply to them. Whenever we get a new client, an entire team is at their disposal, aides, doctor, nurses, volunteers if desired, social worker and a chaplin. We actually have two chaplins.

A couple of weeks ago, one of our chaplins, whose office is right next to mine put up a photo of President Obama. It’s the one in front of the capitol building when he was campaigning in 2008. Now, I was surprised at this because not only are we not supposed to to talk politics in the office (HA! Just about all of the people who work in this office are PBO supporters), but the owners of our company are religious right-wingers who have held fundraisers for our rethug governor. Now to be fair, the CEO has always been very supportive of me and I do appreciate that. Last Wednesday, she came to our office because we finally had this stupid audit that they’ve been driving us nuts with it for a year! Well, wouldn’t ya know she parks her stuff right in the chaplin’s office right in front of this 8×10 photo of the President on her desk! I thought to myself, “Oh, shit,” but nothing was said.

Turns out that the chaplin, who is female, was instrumental in starting a hospice in Honolulu, HI…the very same one that took care of the President’s grandmother. The photo is a copy of one that was given to the hospice aide and signed by the President. The inscription reads “Thank you for taking such good care of my Tutu. Barack Obama.” Someone at the hospice, sent the photo to the chaplin a long time ago, but she decided she was going bring it into the office and keep it on her desk. Her feeling is that this is was a wonderful tribute to hospice workers and that no one would dare part their lips to complain and no one has. I really like this chaplin…she’s a sweetheart.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected arguments from fuel makers that California’s “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” discriminated against out-of-state producers.

The ruling reverses a U.S. District Court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, and removes an injunction that at one point halted implementation of the law.

The California Air Resources Board, the agency in charge of implementing the standard, appealed, and was able to continue implementing the law while the case was being heard.

The low carbon fuel standard is a key piece of California’s landmark global warming law, AB 32, and is meant to cut the state’s dependence on petroleum by 20 percent and account for one-tenth of the state’s goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

GE LL, a TODer said today, perhaps it was HF2, that their goal is to decimate PBO presidency.
Ed Schultz said no such thing happened and he doesn’t understand where the NYT got the story as reported. Then he explained what took place. He is bound by MSNBC Contract not to bash their own, Richard Wolffe. But the way he addressed the issue showed that Richard Wolffe might have lied.

Remember Wolffe was in a mess yrs ago with Newsweek/TIME and his extracurriculars…..conflict of interest. Keith Olberman, used to have him on and had to suspend Richard Wolffe’s appearances.

I sent Chuck Todd a email and told him that President Obama is not a lame duck President. I told him that we stop paying any attention to what he had to say when he kept telling us that we were not as excited about getting out to vote as the Republicans. I told him that we stop paying him any attention when he told us that President Obama had no chance of being re-elected because of the economy, and when he was out there in Ohio having dinner with the Ohio the Republican SOS, a Republican who did everything he could to prevent blacks, latinos, women and young people from voting.